Milo Yield: Laugh Tracks in the Dust 10-1-12

Some of the best true stories I hear about happened years and years ago, but the humor in them remains as current as if they happened yesterday.

Let me set the scene. Gimpy wuz into his seventh or eighth decade in life, but he wuz still full of life. Although the years were advancing, Gimp still served as the fire chief of the rural volunteer fire department in his little rural community. He also had a part-time job at the local hardware store.

Well, one day in the dead of winter, a hardware store customer came into the store and announced that he had six mature roosters at his home and he needed to get rid of them — for free. Seeing an opportunity for bowls and bowls of no-expense chicken and noodle soup, Gimp and the hardware store owner, Nutson Boltz, volunteered to take the roosters off the owner's hands — providing that he deliver the roosters in a coop to the hardware store.

The next morning there wuz a coop with six roosters sitting in the hardware store shop. Since it was cold as a brass monkey, Gimp volunteered to warm up the fire station that afternoon and get a bucket of water boiling, so he and Nutson could scald, pick feathers and dress the roosters in relative comfort.

He said he’s suffering from the dreaded “furniture disease.” His chest is falling into his drawers!

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When Nutson suggested that things might get a little bloody and "feathery" in the fire station, Gimp said they'd chop the heads off the roosters outside the fire station and then scald and pick the roosters carefully in the fire station so as not to make too big a mess.

So, Gimp left work a little early to convert the fire station into a temporary chicken slaughter house. And, to help keep himself warm, Gimp amply fortified himself directly out of a bottle of Kentucky's finest beverage.

So, when five o'clock rolled around, Nutson arrived at the fire station and found all the preparations in place — firehouse warm, water boiling, a stump and an ax sitting just outside the door, and Gimp just a little on the tipsy side.

Gimp volunteered to humanely dispatch the roosters and one by one the ax fell and, as beheaded chickens are bound to do, they did bloody cartwheels on the frosty earth outside the firehouse door. At least the first five did. The sixth rooster had other ideas.

When the ax fell on that sixth rooster, it simply did a "beheaded run" straight down the alley for 50 feet, then went into the most acrobatic tumbling act imaginable, and finally flounced its way under a pickup truck topper that wuz being stored near the alley. Then all went silent.

Gimp and Nutson had watched the entire chicken spectacle and, when it ended with the chicken out-of-sight under the topper, Gimp teetered his way to the topper. He wobbled himself down onto his arthritic knees, and peeked under the topper.

That's when a wild old tom cat that had been hunkered out of the cold wind beneath the topper decided to make his loud and hissing escape right through the kneeling Gimp.

The astonished Gimp fell onto his backside in fright and nearly had an involuntary evacuation of his lower intestinal tract in the process.

Peals of laughter ensued at that moment — and they continue to this very day.

e_SBlt

My brother-in-law Charl Lay sent me the following information.

He said he is now thoroughly "modern" when it comes to his appearance. He told me he now wears his garage door opener clipped so his belt to folks will think he's wearing a fancy status-symbol cell phone.

Then he added that he realized that he'd spent a fortune on deodorant before he realized that people didn't like him anyway.

Then he added that women should put pictures of missing husbands on beer cans if they really want to find them.

Then he said he was thinking about old age and decided that old age is "when you still have something on the ball, but you are just too tired to bounce it."

He noted he's planning on making a fitness movie for folks our age, and call it "Pumping Rust."

He said he's suffering from the dreaded "furniture disease." His chest is falling into his drawers!

He said he wuz filling out an insurance policy form and one of the form blanks asked: "Who is to be notified in case of an emergency." Charl said he answered: "A Good Doctor."

And, finally, he said he was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older. Then, it dawned on him. They were cramming for their finals. As for Charl, he said, "I'm just hoping God grades on the curve."

e_SBlt

That's it for this week. Until next week, here's a few wise words about aging from actor Maurice Chevalier. He said, "A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay, it should give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world."